Nearly five months after the January 25 Revolution began in downtown Cairo, Bidoun Magazine commissioned Ayman Ramadan to produce a street sign that proclaimed, in both Arabic and English, “The Situation is Fluid” – an echo of the now infamously feeble statement made on January 28 by the White House regarding the political unrest in Egypt.
The magazine-commissioned project did not go forward, but Ramadan was intrigued by the image of the bilingual sign and the heated debates its message inspired when he discussed the piece with various residents of Cairo. And as Ramadan photographed the sign in seemingly random places throughout the city, it began to open up to even more potential meanings.
Intrigued by these initial photos, Ramadan (whose past work has often attempted to integrate art, politics, and everyday life) released the sign into the rest of the world. Participants across Europe, Asia and the Americas photographed it in the location of their choosing, and sent the image back to the artist, who compiled the resulting photos into a one-volume publication.
In its final form, Ramadan’s project raises a provocative series of questions regarding the individual subject’s position in a rapidly shifting urban landscape, and how that individual accepts or rejects the power systems that control the symbols of authority. In “The Situation is Fluid,” Ramadan puts the audience into a direct confrontation with the political by asking them to actively construct their own systems of meaning, instead of passively accepting those that are offered them.
